Honorable Mention And the birds will continue singing Silvia Brandon-Perez

Some tell me I should not include personal details in my verse, that the universal quality is lost, that tomorrow no one will understand about the taste of black beans or the avocado salad that brings the memory of my country to my tongue.

Some protest if I speak of the sexual abuse suffered as a child or the daily abuses as a new immigrant, spittings, curse words, and some are bothered by my conversation about my old car, with its dents and its smell of cat piss,

impossible to remove no matter how it's washed, but I am not thinking of tomorrow, or of universality or other aromatic herbs, when I write from the room at the top of a mountain in Pennsylvania, and I look at the snow

which keeps on falling, the temperature which keeps on dropping, I am a photographer of now, I photograph the wrinkles that I find mornings on my cheeks, the rebel gray strands that fight comb and brush, am fascinated by the slow walk

of a small ant which crosses the eaves and attempts to enter through the small window, like a soldier at the vanguard of battle for that crumb of old bread, that bit of sugar left on the table after breakfast, I am hours absorbed in the contemplation of the courting of small red birds

on the birch trees, in springtime, when shoots of flowers come, sleepy blooms peeking out as if it were nothing, in the end, as told by Li Po, Basho, Sappho and Juan Ramón Jiménez, when I go away, the birds will continue singing.

Note: The title is from a poem by Spanish nobel laureate, Juan Ramón Jiménez, called "El viaje definitivo."